Joshua Gayou - Commune - The Complete Series - A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Box Set (Books 1-4)

He let the word trail off and took a sip of his water. He kept his eyes locked on Johnny the whole time, eyebrows still raised, allowing the implication to hang in the air. Johnny understood: he had until the end of the Doc’s examination to turn up a name. Failing that, his entire crew was accountable.

He swallowed hard and nodded.

“So much for the whores. What else is there?”

Johnny raised a less-than-steady finger and stuttered, “S-S-Since you bring up the subject of credits and fair labor, there is a matter worth discussing.”

“Let’s have it, then.”

“I… I’ve been getting some complaints from various groups. A few people are driving up their wages by sandbagging their work; taking a couple of hours for a job that should have only been one, or even a half.”

“Union guys, huh?” Clay nodded. “How many, Johnny?”

“I don’t have a full accounting. There are a few names. Carl was one. Uh, I think Albert was another.”

“Flores?”

“No, Albert Rooney. A few of the women, too. Mostly, it’s people getting by on offering services. Handy-man types, seamstress work, people running the laundries, you get the idea. We’re not seeing anything like it from the scavengers yet. I think because they’re getting paid based on their haul. They haven’t thought of a way to game the system.”

“Yet…” Pap said.

“Uh,” thought Clay. “These people complaining… what do they say?”

“Well, that it’s bullshit, mostly.”

Clay grunted. “Fine. The next one of them who comes to bitch at you about the unfairness of it all, you just let ’em know that we operate a free market, here. There’s opportunity everywhere, isn’t there? If someone’s charging too much for a service, you can almost always bet that somebody else will come around that can do it faster and cheaper. You say that, and you tell them to spread the word. A little competition never hurt anyone.”

A lot of heads started nodding around the room and even John, who rarely laughed at anything, laughed softly to himself at that moment. Pap again found himself, not for the first or last time, amazed at Clay’s ability to think on his feet. Personally, Pap (named Preston by his mother but called Pap forever after by his father, Daniel O’Hearn) had always been more of a plodding, deliberate thinker and admired the easy display of mental agility in others. And if there was anyone who made it look easy it was Clay, even hung over and half-rolled out of bed.

“So, how’s tallies, Johnny?” Clay asked.

“Worse,” he admitted, looking down at his notebook. “Another linear drop in yield since the previous run.”

“About what you’d warned. Do you have an updated projection?”

He flipped a few pages. “Near as I can tell, we’ll be taking in less than we consume in four days.”

A few whistles sounded around the room. Clay just hung his head.

“Well… Jesus fucking Christ, Johnny. I thought we were doing better than that. What the fuck happened?”

“Come on, Clay,” John scoffed. “You know how these numbers work; hell, you were the one who showed me how to build the model. A good day or two can throw the curve just as easy as a bad one can. We’ve just had some downturn, is all. Really, I think the area’s starting to pinch out.”

“Damn,” whispered Clay. “Does it seem to anyone else that this is coming on faster each place we go?”

“Well, we’re getting bigger, Baws. Keep takin’ on more people.”

“Yeah, I guess… Hey! Does that projection account for the people Ronny took with him?”

“Sure,” John said.

“What’s it look like without them?”

“I… well, I haven’t run that.”

“Run it and see. That’s sixty-seven fewer mouths if we can’t turn them up. That’s gotta count for something, huh?”

Several faces around the room went pensive at this, to which Clay responded by heaving out of his chair and growling, “Hey, fuck you people, huh? It’s just numbers at this point. You can’t plan a goddamned thing without numbers.” He tossed his empty water bottle towards the trashcan in the corner, missing by several feet. “Run it, Johnny,” he ordered and made for the exit.

“Where you headin’ off to, Baws?” Pap called.

Over his shoulder, Clay spat, “Out to see if I can fucking produce another fucking sixty-seven fucking mouths to feed before the First Fucking Wives Club decides to hold a fucking candlelight vigil!” He ran out of breath towards the end of his rant and was coughing violently when the door swung shut behind him.

The full brightness of the sun smacked Clay in the face as soon as he stepped through the front door, even though the fall air was brisk and invigorating. He kept reminding himself to pick up a pair of sunglasses for shit like this, promptly forgetting to follow through each time the poison worked its way from his body and his concentration was back onto bigger problems. He reminded himself yet again, knowing he’d forget later that day. Squinting hard enough to increase the throb in his head, he stepped out into his little clan’s front yard.

They had set up camp in the common parking area between two hotels; Clay’s own Marriott and a Hampton Inn across the way (now to his right as he stood outside the door of his place). The camp itself looked more like a swap meet than anything else; there were all sorts of easy-up sun shades laid out all over, with a few trucks parked up next to some of them. There were some actual tents as well; their flaps pulled open to let in the chill morning air. People bustled all about the area, making morning noises with their morning activities. Clay thought he saw a few cook fires going and he was certain he smelled food.

He figured there would be people inside the hotels moving about as well, going through their own modified start-of-the-day routines. Having to split some of the people into the parking lot had been a tough break; it seemed some of the Plague evacuees from the old days had been warehoused in places like this, probably overspill from the quarantine camp out by Las Vegas Bay. Because of that reality, many of the rooms in both places were still occupied by previous tenants when his party arrived. He’d put the question to his people: shall we clean these places out and make them habitable? Most of the people just wanted to fall into bed after a long, hard period of travel; they opted to skip room to room fumigation, thank you kindly. After some hemming and hawing about who got to sleep where, Clay washed his hands of the whole discussion and went to find something soft to collapse upon. When he awoke the next morning, he found the parking lot transformed into the hobo wonderland he saw before him now. He remembered feeling slightly relieved when he saw that; relieved that he could safely step away from a problem from time to time and, if he just gave it long enough, it would take care of itself before he could find his way back to it again. He wished more problems were like that.

Clay started to negotiate his way through the jumble, making for the Service King body shop just across the lot opposite his motel. Most of their working vehicles would be lined up along the other side, he knew, with some of the troubled ones pulled inside the shop so that Beau could work his magic on them. As he threaded through the press of junk-laden tables and hopping folk, he saw that the laundry tent was already into full swing. There were ten or twelve people, all sitting around in a circle, bent over buckets and bins (anything that was waterproof, really), vigorously agitating the sudsy water contained therein with their hands and, in some cases, busted broom handles. From time to time, one of them would pull some article of clothing from his or her container and walk it over to the dry line, where it would be hung to air out in the sun.